Sarah Hart

Sarah Hart is a mathematician and author. She is Professor Emerita of Mathematics and Fellow of Birkbeck College (University of London), and has recently served a four-year term as Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, the first woman to hold this chair since its creation in 1597.

She studied at Oxford and Manchester, gaining her PhD in 2000. She became Professor of Mathematics at Birkbeck in 2013, and then Head of the Department of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics from 2016-2019. She also served a three-year term as President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics from 2021-24, and will be President of the Mathematical Association in 2026.

As a hugely popular lecturer with over 20 years teaching experience, she is a regular speaker at international events, and has written for publications including the New York Times and New Scientist. Media appearances include being a guest on BBC Radio 4’s Start The Week, the Infinite Monkey Cage, the BBC Radio 6 Breakfast show, NPR in the U.S., and Radio New Zealand. Sarah is particularly interested in the cultural, historical and creative impact of mathematics, and the links between mathematics and the arts. Her first book, Once Upon a Prime: The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature, published in 2023, was a New York Times Book review Editor’s Choice, and won the Mathematical Association of America’s Euler Book Prize in 2024.